


back to the weeds

by CampionSayn



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Connor Murphy Week: Day 1, Gen, Haunting, could this be construed as monster or ghost!Evan?, this is super late but at least I tried
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 10:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14975117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: In which Connor Murphy gets to live, but nobody sees Evan Hansen after the blond saves the other's life.





	back to the weeds

_It wasn't for you._

_It wasn't for you._

_It wasn't for you._

As it happened so often after that night in the rain at the park, and the consequential morning-after with the horrible news of recovery coming and the letter that wasn't supposed to have a twin resting on the side-table waiting for him; Connor woke up, first week into the month of October, with blood in his mouth.

He didn't hesitate to lean over the side of the bed and spit into the trash bin, the metal at the bottom giving a decisive ' _blip_ ' at the impact of red saliva that Connor couldn't hear as he was flicking off the alarm that was a whisper of a moment from screaming at him. He often liked the personal half-victory of beating the piece of shit to the punch and he allowed himself a sneer at the stupidity of such a human emotional as he made for the bathroom without turning any lights on.

The house was better in the early morning silence before his parents were up and about and Zoe was set to get the shower before anyone. It almost allowed him to believe that he was alone entirely.

But he wasn't.

He could feel those eyes on him staring out from under the dark shadows thrown by the bare hints of sunrise through the window curtains and the darker dealings often forgotten beyond the furniture. Could just make out the underlying sounds of movement as noncorporeal mass made from one place of hiding to another.

It was so fucked up that this was a kind of comfort he'd never gotten before his suicide attempt, but it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened.

* * *

Connor remembered very clearly choosing the park to end it because it wasn't like anyone ever went there during the night that weren't looking for their own kind of trouble and even less of those were around when it was raining, anyway.

So by the time he'd swallowed most of those pills and laid out on the bench along the trail to let the water hit his face and trying to watch the lightning flitter about the inside of the dark clouds, he'd been understandably pissed off when he was starting to lose reality and found himself being picked up. The stuttered worry voiced his way had gotten him to look up at the someone he hadn't been expecting, mumbling that he was gonna be fine, they were going to the hospital, that letter really hadn't been meant for him or anyone to see.

Looking back, it had been considerably badass that Hansen managed to carry Connor's long body all the way to his truck and barely paused to punch through the driver side window so he could stuff the brunet inside and then haul ass to the nearest emergency room. But at the time he hadn't thought it was badass, or thought much of anything at all since he was starting to tremor and ramble and he wasn't quite sure if he'd said, "Mom's gonna be pissed about that window, dude."

The hospital entrance and stay in the first hour was a garbled mass of ... What Connor knew happened and what he thought happened.

He knew that he'd had his stomach pumped. The feeling and taste is something you don't forget, even drugged to the gills as he was. He thought one of the nurses talked to Hansen. She made it seem, when he woke up, like her son had been really worried about one of his friends; Connor blinking an hour later when he realized  _he_  was the friend she was assuming. He knew his family had been called. Zoe had shown up saying that Jared Kleinman got her number from Alana Beck and rudely told her that her older brother had tried to off himself,  _"So get your ass to the ER, pretty girl; I'd imagine you'd wanna see him, just in case."_

An action and a verbal exchange that Connor would have, had circumstances remained the same and not slanted horribly within the next week, kicked Kleinman's ass for, but never got the inclination to act on after he got out of the sterile environment of the hospital.

But, no, instead of plotting revenge on Kleinman for scaring his sister and making her cry for him  _(very strange, not something he thought she was capable of doing for him after she'd called him a monster)_  and plotting a little visit for Hansen to explain what the hell his rambling meant, his stay in the hospital actually lead to him getting the help he needed once that  _other_  letter was handed to him by the nurse he finally realized was Hansen's mother and she'd gone off on his parents for being negligent "fucking self-centered assholes who sure as hell were going to get Connor a therapist or she was reporting them to every higher authority she could find, god dammit."

Guilt was a real motivator. So was fear.

He wasn't sure which one fit either of his parents until he'd gotten home and finally opened the letter.

The paper had obviously been in water, words a little blurred from the wet, but still readable. Little lines of the ink were obviously fingerprints from writing too fast and swiping over the ink, making it seem a lot more real and honest when on first reading Connor felt like reality was slipping again.

_'Dear, Connor Murphy_

_It wasn't for you._

_That paper you pulled out of the printer at school was a letter, yes, but a letter for myself._

_It wasn't for you._

_My therapist seems to think that writing positive reinforcement will act as a crutch to improve my anxiety levels, even though they don't really turn out that way and just make me feel creepy and you don't want to hear that, I'm sorry. And I'm sorry, very much, about actually writing anything about your sister; she was just nice to me and I thought mentioning someone who was nice to me might help with the positive stream of input, but...that didn't happen. I'm sorry._

_It wasn't for you._

_Thank you for signing my cast._

_Sincerely, Me.'_

He went to be at three in the afternoon, that first day back, those words cycling through his head, knowing full well he had a choice to make and already emotionally drained from the reality.

Connor almost felt less heavy when it seemed as though, when he flicked his gaze to his open closet before sleep took him, a pair of shining white that circled the iris of eyes were shining out from the dark.

* * *

He went to school a week later with his mind set to talk to the kid and have him explain the anxiety thing and what the hell a letter was going to do to fix that.

Connor had even dug through his closet and drawers to find some clothing that would make him less intimidating so that when he walked into school he was sporting: simple knee-torn blue jeans, black converse scuffed up from the few times he went to gym instead of smoking in the parking lot, a grey-pink shirt his father hated given that  **'Go Deep Throat a Cactus'**  written across the front was the pink part, and a brown fleece-lined jacket.

No lie, when he put his hair in a bun before riding with Zoe to school  _(his truck had been suspiciously absent, probably at a garage getting tuned up)_  and taken a moment to prepare himself, he wasn't expecting quite so much flirtation by the time lunch rolled around.

_(Perhaps his biggest problem with his reputation was not just his general attitude, it was his usual aesthetic?)_

But that wasn't what he was focused on. He was focused on the fact that Hansen was nowhere to be seen, and Connor knew he had exactly three classes with him; biology and history were where he expected Hansen to be, given that his grades in those classes were the highest from those fascist rankings placed outside the rooms each semester. But his seat had been empty.

So, instead of waiting to see him in the locker rooms before gym where it would be conspicuous as hell to walk over and say they needed to talk within hearing range of the asshole jocks and obnoxious pricks that were barely higher up in social standing than either of them, Connor opted to find the blond at lunch.

He didn't have a clique of his own, just like Connor, and preferred to stay along the fringes of the loudest areas where teenagers gossiped and stuffed their faces in hoards or small numbers. Being an expert at what one could call playing 'chicken' came the assumption of a quiet siting and maneuver to get things over and done with.

But...nothing. Not a hair or trace of Hansen around, even when Connor chanced a quick step into the library and computer lab.

Rather than get angry about this, like he would have before the pills and playing his part in what felt like an action hero movie, Connor plugged in his earbuds and considered his options. Listening to that one super creepy David Bowie song from the ' _Se7en_ ' Morgan Freeman movie, as well as some of the soundtrack from Moulin Rouge; his chosen meal of the cafeteria's buffalo chicken macaroni the only thing giving him energy as his thoughts spun like spiderwebs.

This wasn't usual, but then, neither was anything else that had happened after he took the pills. Evan Hansen was a good kid who didn't skip school, not like a hookie expert who showed up in the morning classes and then ditched; but, then, there were days when he just  _wasn't_  there but always showed back up the next day or so later with all of his work done and bags under his eyes.

Anxiety. He had anxiety, the twin letter had said that.

So, maybe he wasn't around because he was at home having a consecutive round of panic attacks?

Finishing the food in front of him, a wonder to behold if his mother had been around, Connor put the cardboard bowl and plastic knife in the recycling bins the school provided and went to sit in the bathroom and flip a coin.

Heads, he'd ask Alana Beck. Tails, he'd ask Kleinman.

Taking a breath, he flipped the quarter in hand  _(something he couldn't get rid of and hadn't in three years since it was from 1999 and kind of pretty)_  and looked down to see what fate had in store for him.

"...thank fucking Christ."

* * *

Alana had yakkety-yakked his ear off, exactly like he thought she would when she found him, alive, before her at the end of the day, but he did not lose heart and blow up at her for being herself. She didn't ask why he wanted Evan's address and phone number, she'd just taken his silence and aversion to all attempts at eye contact as all the answers she needed and wrote it all down on her almost brazen bright yellow notepad.

He'd pushed aside the little chill that raced up his arm when the paper was in hand and he suffered a little more small talk before lying about having to meet Zoe to get a ride home.

Once he'd taken off outside out the back parking lot, he looked upon the address and was glad in that it was only about a ten minute walk.

Or so it was, until he'd gotten within three blocks of a neighborhood filled with low pay mortgage houses completely different to Connor's own street that actually made him feel comfortable and peaceful for all of five minutes, until he'd found himself looking upon some laminated papers in bright dandelion colors with not-quite black and white ink making up Hansen's face and a collection of words that basically amounted to saying "please call, so we know he's alive" stapled to lamp posts and one smoking shelter.

The missing date correlated, by Connor's calculations in the haze of his not-high, not happy, but not in a wanting-to-die state of mind, to just after the boy had dropped the twin note in Connor's hospital room.

He never made it all the way to Evan's house and Kleinman's not being around school or showing up randomly and looking like shit made a whole lot more sense in the days to come as October neared on the horizon and Alana made it a point to seek him out during lunch and fill him in.

It was a little terrifying, and made him feel like choking on debris sliding through the air smaller than pin-pricks and not worthy of calling air motes or dust.

And every night that followed, Connor not buying weed and going to therapy and making some effort to live, came with that feeling of eyes on him in the shadows. His hair stood on end when he was alone on the walk to school  _(taking a seat in Zoe's car made him feel both anxious and guilty now)_  and there was...something like security pressing in on him when his meds started to wane and everything felt like too much; invisible hands on his shoulders or fingers running through his hair like when he was a kid and needed the comfort in touch.

Connor kept those two notes in his wallet in his back pocket like witch's ruins to protect him from everything else.

And he knew Evan was dead.

He'd looked and looked, on weekends and during the nights where being in the same house as his parents and sister was like stirring up the demons in his head, and even if he didn't know Evan as a friend, schoolmate, or an actual person, he also knew that there wasn't going to be a happy ending to Ms. Hansen's hopes or Kleinman's calling the one number in his phone he'd never dialed before all this horrible shit transpired between two fucked up kids during the first day of school.

He went to sleep and spent the entire night in a state of rest, when before the hospital he'd rarely gotten a whole four hours without nightmares or terrors in hallucinations in unconsciousness. He'd wake up, and suddenly there was this sort of awareness of what had happened to the boy with the cast  _before_  he'd pushed him in the hall and  _after_  he'd woken in that sterile bed to find Hansen's mother making the situation of their lives clear to the Murphys.

Connor didn't really remember his dreams, but then, he wouldn't call them that if pressed and when he went to his therapist, he knew he was competent because he really cared about his patients and had been trying to help Evan for almost a decade before all this happened.

See? He knew things he would never be able to explain without citing the source being from the whispers in the dark in the corners of his room or under his bed or being there for him like a tether, an emergency exit, a lifeboat, a friend that asked for nothing in return.

* * *

"Are you okay?"

Winter had pressed down harder than usual in town and made the park look prettier than it usually did, somehow. Connor could appreciate the fog and chill of the snow as it fell into the landscape just a week after Halloween, when the presence he knew the name of made himself more available in daylight hours.

Chill usually meant all the coffee shops were getting in maximum orders for hot cocoa, which meant it was usually on sale.

The whipped cream on top of his to-go cup smoothly mixed in with the drink as Connor spun his straw in clockwise motions, observing and waiting for something to happen.

How could a dead boy answer such a question? Would he even? Ms. Hansen had finally gotten her degree as a paralegal, but was still hoping that her son would come home; Kleinman had negated his belief that being a dick would get him anywhere in life, and had found himself a person to call 'friend' in Alana as a result; Cynthia and Larry were trying to work out their marriage through Larry going to sensitivity seminars and Cynthia getting an actual job (nurse's aid) to keep from going crazy and driving her family crazy as a result. Zoe had started interacting with her brother and Connor was trying.

All this, Connor was grateful for, he truly was, but he also felt guilty all the time, because they'd yet to find Evan's body.

It was somewhere safe, where wolves couldn't tear flesh from the bones, crows couldn't eat the eyes and blowflies couldn't use the rest of the carcass for a nursery, but still...still...

Connor's answer was the best that could be given, under the circumstances.

The tree he was sitting under, wide branches long enough and body tall enough to make Connor think of ancient gods from pantheons that had long been forgotten, dropped an acorn down to land in his lap.

The tree was  _not_  an acorn tree.

"Hm, okay then. Cute."


End file.
